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Social Media Impact on Peace and Conflict in the Horn of Africa

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Social Media Impact on Peace and Conflict in the Horn of Africa ei March-April 2017 Vol 29 Issue 2 Beyond Keyboard Warriors & Surveillance: Social Media Impact on Peace and Conflict in the Horn of Africa Contents 1. Editor's Note 2. ICT4Peace in the Horn of Africa? 3. Mollifying the Web in Ethiopia: Matching Practice to Policy 4. Social Media, Community Policing and the ‘Digitisation’ of public participation in Kenya 5. Webs of peace and conflict: diasporic engagement in South Sudan 6. Internet shutdowns as major constraints for digital political activism in the Horn of Africa 1 Editorial information This publication is produced by the Life & Peace Institute (LPI) with support from the Bread for the World, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and Church of Sweden International Department. The donors are not involved in the production and are not responsible for the contents of the publication. Editorial principles The Horn of Africa Bulletin is a regional policy periodical, monitoring and analysing key peace and security issues in the Horn with a view to inform and provide alternative analysis on on-going debates and generate policy dialogue around matters of conflict transformation and peacebuilding. The material published in HAB represents a variety of sources and does not necessarily express the views of the LPI. Comment policy All comments posted are moderated before publication. Feedback and subscriptions For subscription matters, feedback and suggestions contact LPI’s regional programme on HAB@life- peace.org For more LPI publications and resources, please visit: www.life-peace.org/resources/ ISSN 2002-1666 About Life & Peace Institute Since its formation, LPI has carried out programmes for conflict transformation in a variety of countries, conducted research, and produced numerous publications on nonviolent conflict transformation and the role of religion in conflict and peacebuilding. The main focus of our work has been on Africa, with the Horn of Africa Programme being established and well-known in the 1990s, not least our work in Somalia. Other initiatives have been carried out in Congo-Brazzaville, Croatia, Sri Lanka and East Timor. We have strengthened the capacity of our civil society partners to address the conflicts in their own context, in some of the most difficult and war-torn countries. Currently, we run conflict transformation programmes in the Horn of Africa and Great Lakes regions in partnership with local civil society organisations and universities in Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and the DRC. There is also a common programme including publications, policy work and methodology design based in Sweden. 2 EDITOR'S NOTE State fragility, authoritarianism and stalled or on-going democratisation processes, all of which in some ways define the African condition, makes Africa an interesting test case for the impact of the internet and social media on the dynamics of conflict, peace and political transformation. While social media platforms had arguably been assigned an outsized role in the outbreak and unfolding of the ‘Arab Spring’ which began in North Africa, the initial euphoria and enthusiasm regarding the emancipatory potential of social media has since cooled off appreciably. Developments in Libya and Egypt coupled with the masterful exploitation of social media platforms by ‘extremist’ groups for recruitment and propaganda purposes has underlined the inherently Janus-faced nature of social media platforms, a point underscored by several articles in this issue of the HAB. The panoramic article by Desta reviews the Information and Communications Technology for Peace (ICT4P) literature on the Horn of Africa (the Horn) and showcases the varying levels towards which peacebuilders in the Horn have been able to exploit the internet and social media for conflict transformation and peace-building. His article shows that it is Kenya, the country with the highest internet penetration in the Horn, where several social media tools have been developed for conflict management and conflict transformation. On the other hand, the Ethiopian case is noteworthy for initiatives such as the WoredaNet, SchoolNet, etc. which have utilised the internet for socio-economic programs. The article by Omanga is an interesting piece which focuses on two cases where social media tools were deployed to enhance community policing and also to enable grassroots political deliberation. The empirically rich article by Omanga’s explores the potential of social media to improve governance at the local level and as a tool to expand political participation and provides valuable lessons for the rest of the Horn. His article shows how the internet and social media have allowed actors and citizens to transcend the limits of traditional channels and processes of political participation. In much of Africa where independent traditional media (radio, TV, and print media) are either absent or operate under tight constraints, the internet and social media can acquire an outsized importance and impact creating new channels of interaction and communication and enabling those who were previously ‘quiescent’ or ‘detached’ to participate in the public sphere. Across Africa and more so in the Horn social media platforms provide access to information and news outside the strictures of the authoritarian state and provide what little space there is for relatively autonomous debate and discussion. Interestingly, there is a growing tendency whereby the messaging and narratives articulated in state controlled traditional media are increasingly being challenged by counter-narratives and discourse generated in social media. Social media has also emerged as a key site for opposition ideological and organisational mobilisation against governments in power as underlined by recent events in Ethiopia, Uganda, Sudan, and Eritrea. In response, governments across Africa, in Egypt (2011), the Democratic Republic of Congo (January 2015), the Republic of Congo (2016) and closer to home in Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya have also utilised internet restrictions and in more extreme cases imposed full-fledged shutdowns of the internet in the context of electoral contests or large scale protests. A related development has been the growing expansion of legislation and policies in relation to the cyber realm including social media, that have the general goal of expanding state control over the internet and social media content, and penalising individuals and content providers producing content deemed ‘offensive’ or threatening to national security. However, the dual nature and effect of social media alluded to earlier remains critical in terms of understanding, the correlation between social media activism and conflict, stability and peace, above all in the Horn of Africa. The articles by Michael and Carver focusing on Ethiopia 3 and South Sudan respectively, showcase the potential for social media activism to be exploited to generate ‘fake news’ and incite hatred and conflict. Michael’s article underlines the tendency towards the emergence of the cyber-realm as a field of political contestation coupled with the attendant process of the securitisation of the cyber-sphere. Carver’s article on the South Sudan at the same time shows how social media activism and its effects on peace and conflict in the Horn of Africa is inextricably linked to processes such as migration and the emergence of Diaspora communities coupled with the advent of satellite television and internet enabled money transfer schemes. The article by Thomas focuses on internet shutdowns in the Horn which interestingly debunks the conventional wisdom that holds governments as solely responsible for internet shutdowns. His article discusses cases where internet service providers (ISPs) have been forced to cease their operations based on threats or actions by governments outside the Horn or ‘extremist’ movements. The articles in this issue of the Horn of Africa Bulletin, in spite of their divergent thematic and geographical focus, emphasise certain themes: the inherent contradiction exemplified in the immense potential of the internet and social media for new and emancipatory politics coupled with their instrumentalisation to incite conflict and hate; the process of expanding state regulation and surveillance over the cyber realm which at the same time is being countered through recourse to tools and platforms designed to evade control. A recurring theme in several articles is the so far underutilisation of social media platforms and tools for peacebuilding, with the partial exception of Kenya. Readers of this issue of the Horn of Africa Bulletin should also be aware that there are a few questions raised by the articles that have yet to be adequately answered. A key issue centres on the statistics on levels of internet penetration in the HoA at present. Several articles cite widely varying and contradictory figures for internet penetration in the Horn which suggests that there is a need for further research and more rigorous data. The articles in this issue of the Horn of Africa Bulletin are not only topical in that they discuss a subject which will assume growing importance in the years to come with expanding internet access across the region, but also shed light on what is still a little studied area. Demessie Fantaye, Editor 4 HORN OF AFRICA ICT4Peace in the Horn of Africa? By Tedla Desta The ICT4Peace Literature The pioneer of peace studies Johan Galtung (1996) proposed two types of peace: negative peace meaning the absence of violence and positive peace where
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